Pages

Sunday, December 2, 2012

ESA Extends Its Mars Planning, But…

Buried among the major announcements from the recently concluded
ministerial meeting were other decisions that may impact planetary exploration
in the coming decade. I discussed the
two most prominent of these decisions relevant to planetary exploration in my
last post; ESA approved the ExoMars joint implementation agreement with Russia,
and decided not to proceed with a German-backed lunar lander.

Buried in the news were two other items, one positive for planetary
exploration the other not.

I’ll start with the positive news.
ESA has viewed the ExoMars orbiter and rover missions as the first two
missions in what would be a continuing set of missions to explore Mars. The space agency has investigated a number of
possible missions for the first half of the 2020’s. Two missions could have been ESA’s
contribution to a joint Mars sample return mission with NASA: a precision lander with
a rover to fetch cached samples and/or an orbiter to collect the samples
delivered to Martian orbit and bring them back to Earth.With the delay (potentially indefinite) of
NASA’s contributions to a sample return, ESA has shelved these two concepts.

Two other concepts were approved for continued study by ESA for
potential launch in 2022 and/or 2024.
The Inspire geophysical network mission would deliver 3 landers to Mars
with a seismometer, a weather station, heat flow probe, and possibly other
instruments. (Details have not been
released, likely because the concepts appear to be in the earliest planning
stages.) This network of stations would
build on the single station geophysical NASA InSight mission (2016) and the
Russian geophysical station planned to accompany the ExoMars rover (2018). If either of these stations still operates if
and when the Inspire stations arrive, they would add additional nodes to the
network.

Inspire mission concept. Click on image for a larger version.

The second mission concept would be for a Phobos sample return mission
called Phootprint. Returning a sample of
Phobos, which may be accumulated rubble left from the formation of Mars or
rubble blasted off the planet by asteroid strikes, is a worthy scientific goal
in its own right. Russia attempted a
similar mission, and American scientists have proposed their own equivalent
missions several times for the Discovery program. In addition to the scientific goals, the
mission would also develop much of the hardware needed for the eventual Mars
sample return orbiter.

Phootprint mission concept. Click on image for a larger version.

The decision at the Ministerial mission was to proceed with mission
studies to better define the concepts and prepare them to enter
development. At the next Ministerial
meeting planned for 2015, ESA’s managers plan to seek approval to begin
development on one or both of the missions.

The less positive news for ESA’s science program was that the ministers
decided to freeze its budget for the next several years (after a small bump
from the contributions of two new ESA members).
Inflation will rob the science program of its purchasing power each year
at a projected rate of 2-3% per year.
One news article quoted and ESA science manager as saying that among the
options may be to delay to cancel a mission.
Typically, agencies push budget cuts onto the missions least far along
in selection or development. If ESA does
this, then either its next medium mission selection may be delayed or the JUICE
Jupiter-Ganymede mission may be pushed out.

The ExoMars mission may also impact the science budget. ESA has only one mandatory program, the
science program. Other programs, such as
the one that funds ExoMars and possibly Inspire and Phootprint, are optional
programs. To date, not enough funds have
been committed to implement the ExoMars missions. As a result, ESA management is looking at
possible contributions the science program could make. One idea is to have Russia supply the JUICE
launcher. That would save the science program
money late in this decade, but the ExoMars program needs funding mid-decade. Another idea is for the science program to
directly fund a portion of the ExoMars missions, which would conduct excellent
science. With that flat budget, though,
the potential for ripple effects to other science missions such as JUICE seem
possible.

You can download the presentation where I found the slides above from here.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.